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Tomato-sauce

A savory sauce made from tomatoes, garlic, onion, herbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Tomato-sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the base

  1. Fry the sliced onion and garlic in a pan until softened.

  2. Add the tomatoes, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, clove, peppercorns, and salt.

Reduce and strain

  1. Boil the mixture until it reduces by about one-third.

  2. Mash the sauce gently through a fine colander.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Canned or cooked tomatoes
Provide the main body, moisture and acidity of the sauce.
Onion
Softened in the pan, it adds sweetness and savoury depth to the base.
Garlic
Frying releases its aroma, which flavours the whole sauce.

The step that matters

Reducing the sauce by about one-third. Boiling drives off water and concentrates the flavour while thickening the sauce. Reducing too little leaves it thin and watery, while reducing too far can make it overly intense and pasty.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, garlic, onion, parsley, thyme):

  1. Oreganofits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, garlic, onion, parsley, thyme. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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